WEST FARGO -- The Perry Center, a maternity home that helps women find work and a future, will soon be able to house more than three times its current population.
The Perry Center will soon begin construction on a roughly $2.4 million expansion of its building at 2355 Meadow Ridge Parkway in West Fargo. The two-phase construction project will add a second story of bedrooms and communal living spaces to the facility. A third-floor attic will house mechanical systems.
Perry Center Executive Director Nathaniel Douglas said the expansion will allow the facility to go from nine bedrooms to 33 bedrooms and from five bathrooms to 18 bathrooms.
"It's exciting and terrifying," Douglas said of the growth. "There will be a lot of space and flexibility."
The additional bedrooms and flexibility in space will allow the center to help not only first-time single mothers, but pregnant women who need a place to live with their new baby, as well as children or expectant mothers of twins or multiples.
There is also additional community space planned for the expansion, which will provide multiple areas for Perry Center staff to hold classes or offer other types of support for women in need.
This is something Douglas said is important for the center, as the Perry Center is much more than just a maternity home. The center focuses on three pillars of support for pregnant women: housing, occupation and child care, he said.
In addition to shelter for pregnant women of all ages, the Perry Center offers an on-site child care center to women, along with support for women to find an occupation.
"Our goal is to teach them how to fish not just give them a fish," Douglas said.
To further the occupation component of the Perry Center's mission, the expanded facility will have a business center, where Douglas said a couple of small businesses will be launched out of the space. Perry Center clients will then be employed at those businesses.
"There will be jobs available to work around their programming schedule so they'd be able to receive an income and become independent," Douglas said.
Douglas said from "day one" women are told that their stay is indefinite; there is no time limit to how long women can live at the Perry Center. Douglas estimated that the average woman's stay is about nine months, a duration that he is seeing increase.
"They are coming from really difficult situations, so we step in and say as long as you're moving towards your goals, you can stay here," he said.
The Perry Center is more than just a home for women, it's a full transition program for women of all ages, not just teenagers or young mothers. Douglas said the average age of women at the Perry Center is about 22 years old, although women in their mid to late 30s have also been residents of the Perry Center.
"We see a broad spectrum," he said. "We don't see as many teenagers as we have in the past but we still have a few a year that we are serving," Douglas said.
A woman who may have just given birth can also contact the Perry Center for support. Douglas said the facility has gotten calls from local hospitals on behalf of women who have just given birth and are ready to be released from the hospital but have nowhere to go.
The Perry Center began in 1970 when Dr. David Perry and his wife, Judy Perry, helped assist pregnant women in their home. The couple died in a car crash in 1984 but their friends, Pat and Darold Larson, began searching for a permanent facility to continue the Perry's work and opened the first Perry House at 1008 Main Avenue in Fargo in 1986. It moved to a location near 12th Avenue North and North Dakota State University in 1993.
Then, in 2005, West Fargo approved a planned unit development for the Perry Center and the center opened at its current West Fargo location.
While the Perry Center is one of nearly a dozen agencies in North Dakota affiliated with the state's Alternatives to Abortion program, the center has raised the needed funds for its expansion through private donations, which is also how the center continues to operate.
A private couple donated the majority of the funds as part of a grant for the Perry Center to work on a "dream project," Douglas said.
In 2022, Douglas said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade created anticipation for the center and other similar programs to "get busier."
At the time, an average of about six women lived at the maternity home, and it was licensed for up to 12 women at a time.
In December, Douglas said there has been an uptick in the number of women needing the services of the Perry Center.
"We are seeing more women in crisis situations," he said. "So, I would say we are starting to see an increase."
But that landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision may not be the full cause of that uptick.
"Some of that has to do with the fact that there are a lot of difficult situations in the world," Douglas said. "The world is broken and there are a lot of issues in the world right now. I believe we will continue to see an increase because of the world we live in."
The West Fargo City Commission recently approved the Perry Center's planned unit development amendments and building plans, opening the door for the project to begin work.
The Perry Center owns two buildings on the property already. Construction will be completed in two phases, starting with the office building next to the residential building. The project is expected to be completed by December 2025, Douglas said.